An article highlighting Malta’s problem of coping with influxes of irregular immigrants was yesterday published on UK broadsheet The Telegraph.

In the article, journalist David Rennie pins the problem on Malta being only 180 miles north of Libya.

The article claims Libya has said that there are 1.5 million sub-Saharan Africans on its territory and many have their sights set on Europe.

Mr Rennie writes that many asylum seekers are fleeing persecution in Darfur and Somalia and unknown numbers drown as they cross the Mediterranean.

Under European Union law, asylum seekers must stay in the European country they first arrive in.

Although Malta is no bigger than the Isle of Wight, it is a sovereign member of the EU, so anyone who lands is stuck there, he says.

Mr Rennie said government leaders and military chiefs told The Daily Telegraph that their island was being swamped.

Interior Minister Tonio Borg, is quoted: “What was a problem has evolved into a crisis.”

Five years ago Malta received only 24 illegal migrants. This year’s total stands at more than 1,100 so far, with about 30 arrivals a night – the equivalent of 165,000 asylum seekers reaching Britain.

Mr Rennie writes that Malta’s tradition of hospitality is being slowly poisoned by the crisis while new hard-line nationalist groups spring up, and politicians talk of “putting national interests before human rights”.

Mr Rennie wrote that Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi has urged the leaders of Malta to moderate their language and remember the human beings involved.

He said: “I keep reminding everyone that this is a human crisis. We have to remain true to our values.”

But his government is taking a hard line, too, Mr Rennie says. Adult asylum seekers are locked up on arrival for up to 12 months in former army barracks, police camps or converted warehouses.

The Daily Telegraph was refused permission to visit any detention centres, but said that Fr Paul Pace, a Jesuit priest who works in the camps, described conditions as worse than in any Maltese prison.

Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina told Mr Rennie that many unaccompanied minors in the boats had family in Milan or Rome. “Malta would love to reunite them in Italy. Yet we are not allowed to do it because of EU directives. Before accession, there was a possibility for people to move on. We cannot live with this bottleneck here,” she is quoted as having told him.

Mr Rennie say that there is a fervent hope that larger European states will volunteer to take in some of those granted asylum by Malta.

He also said that Franco Frattini, the EU justice commissioner, recently cautioned Maltese ministers in private not to expect to resettle large numbers of refugees in the rest of the EU. He said such an initiative could be counter-productive, merely attracting bigger numbers of illegal immigrants to the island.

In the medium term, Malta hopes that the lever of EU aid can be used to put pressure on African nations to take back deported citizens.

But for Dr Gonzi, said Mr Rennie, the solution is longer-term still and far harder: the transformation of the African continent.

“We have to give people a reason to live in their own country,” he said.

“It is the only thing that will stop this migration.”